By the time I was using Facebook, I was three or four years out of undergrad. Looking at the service, I could hardly see much appeal. It seemed to track people that - at the time - I only vaguely knew. It just didn't seem interesting.
When I started business school two years ago, this changed quite quickly. Suddenly there were six hundred people going through the same life experience as me, all caught in a bubble in Evanston. People would have exams at the same time, recruit at the same time, go to the same parties. Suddenly, Facebook became addictive. It became the place to learn about how others were faring in a similar two-year journey to that which I was on.
Now that I've graduated, I feel that sense of addiction becoming lost. It's no longer as interesting as it was. Perhaps this is also because, now that I'm an entrepreneur, my network structure - my connections to people, - are now more dispersed than ever.
Yet I can't help but feel that Facebook is optimized for student-like experiences - from which is was born. Outside of these experiences, is it as powerful? Given that the vast majority of peoples' lives are outside of school - surely there is room for an experience that is optimized for the regular non-school life that we all mostly live?
